The Communist Manifesto Revisited

“Food for Thought” is an original column appearing every other Tuesday at Everything-Voluntary.com, by Norman Imberman. Norman is a retired podiatrist who loves playing piano, writing music, lawn bowling, bridge, reading, classical music, going to movies, plays, concerts and traveling. He is not a member of any social network, nor does he plan on becoming one. Dr. Imberman has written a fantastic Christmas song which he had professionally recorded as a demonstration record. He is looking for a publisher, or A & R man, or record producer to listen to his song. It deserves to be a permanent member of the portfolio of familiar and favorite Christmas songs. Archived columns can be found here. FFT-only RSS feed available here.

In the 1848 Communist Manifesto, the authors, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, predicted the “withering away of the State.”

“Withering away of the state is a concept of Marxism, coined by Friedrich Engels, and referring to the idea that the social institution of a state will eventually become obsolete and disappear, as the society will be able to govern itself without the state and its coercive enforcement of the law.” (Wikipedia)

The entire manifesto proceeds to explain why and how the abolition of the State should come about. The last page of that tome enumerates a 10-plank program on how to eliminate the State, as follows:TEN PLANKS OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

In 1848 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote a book outlining a political ideology, titled The Communist Manifesto. Marxism’s basic theme is that the proletariat (the “exploited” working class of a capitalistic society) will suffer from alienation and will rise up against the “bourgeoisie” (the middle class) and overthrow the system of “capitalism.” After a brief period of rule by “the dictatorship of the proletariat” the classless society of communism would emerge. In Manifesto, Marx described the following ten steps as necessary steps to be taken to destroy a free enterprise society! Notice how many of these conditions, foreign to the principles that America was founded upon, have now, in 1997, been realized by the concerted efforts of socialist activists. Remember, government interference in your daily life and business is an intrusion and deprivation of our liberties!

First Plank: Abolition of property in land and the application of all rents of land to public purposes. (Zoning – Model ordinances proposed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover widely adopted. Supreme Court ruled “zoning” to be “constitutional” in 1921. Private owners of property required to get permission from government relative to the use of their property. Federally owned lands are leased for grazing, mining, timber usages, the fees being paid into the U.S. Treasury.)

Second Plank: A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. (Corporate Tax Act of 1909. The 16th Amendment, allegedly ratified in 1913. The Revenue Act of 1913, section 2, Income Tax. These laws have been purposely misapplied against American citizens to this day.)

Third Plank: Abolition of all rights of inheritance. (Partially accomplished by enactment of various state and federal “estate tax” laws taxing the “privilege” of transferring property after death and gift before death.)

Fourth Plank: Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. (The confiscation of property and persecution of those critical – “rebels” – of government policies and actions, frequently accomplished by prosecuting them in a courtroom drama on charges of violations of non-existing administrative or regulatory laws.)

Fifth Plank: Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. (The Federal Reserve Bank, 1913- -the system of privately-owned Federal Reserve banks which maintain a monopoly on the valueless debt “money” in circulation.)

Sixth Plank: Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State. (Federal Radio Commission, 1927; Federal Communications Commission, 1934; Air Commerce Act of 1926; Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938; Federal Aviation Agency, 1958; becoming part of the Department of Transportation in 1966; Federal Highway Act of 1916 (federal funds made available to States for highway construction); Interstate Highway System, 1944 (funding began 1956); Interstate Commerce Commission given authority by Congress to regulate trucking and carriers on inland waterways, 1935-40; Department of Transportation, 1966.)

Seventh Plank: Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. (Department of Agriculture, 1862; Agriculture Adjustment Act of 1933 — farmers will receive government aid if and only if they relinquish control of farming activities; Tennessee Valley Authority, 1933 with the Hoover Dam completed in 1936.)

Eighth Plank: Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies especially for agriculture. (First labor unions, known as federations, appeared in 1820. National Labor Union established 1866. American Federation of Labor established 1886. Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 placed railways under federal regulation. Department of Labor, 1913. Labor-management negotiations sanctioned under Railway Labor Act of 1926. Civil Works Administration, 1933. National Labor Relations Act of 1935, stated purpose to free inter-state commerce from disruptive strikes by eliminating the cause of the strike. Works Progress Administration 1935. Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, mandated 40-hour work week and time-and-a-half for overtime, set “minimum wage” scale. Civil Rights Act of 1964, effectively the equal liability of all to labor.)

Ninth Plank: Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country. (Food processing companies, with the co-operation of the Farmers Home Administration foreclosures, are buying up farms and creating “conglomerates.”)

Tenth Plank: Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production. (Gradual shift from private education to publicly funded began in the Northern States, early 1800’s. 1887: federal money (unconstitutionally) began funding specialized education. Smith-Lever Act of 1914, vocational education; Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 and other relief acts of the 1930’s. Federal school lunch program of 1935; National School Lunch Act of 1946. National Defense Education Act of 1958, a reaction to Russia’s Sputnik satellite demonstration, provided grants to education’s specialties. Federal school aid law passed, 1965, greatly enlarged federal role in education, “head-start” programs, textbooks, library books.)

(Research source: Encyclopedia Britannica.)

Questions for Statists from all sides:

How does what was suggested in The Communist Manifesto differ from what has been enacted into law in the United States of America?

Since almost all liberals and conservatives favor those laws, how do they differ from communists?

Is it possible that liberals no longer find the appellation “communist” to be a pejorative term so that they wear the term on their sleeves as a noble ideal?

Are Statists aware that Marx and Engels called their system of government Socialism?

Are Statists aware that the system of government under the rule of Adolf Hitler was termed National Socialism?

Are Statists, especially liberals, aware that they have been duped but don’t care?

Are Statists aware that most of the harm, destruction, murders, theft, and assorted other evils of history have been perpetrated by those with “good intentions?”

Are Statists aware that a good intentioned act that involves the use of coercion does not make that act a moral act, and the corollary, the use of coercion DOES make it an immoral act, by definition?

So now that the United States of America has actually implemented Marx’s ten-plank program, and destroyed our capitalist system and instituted a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” (and a dictatorship it certainly is), how is Marx’s famous “classless” society supposed to emerge? A classless society means the absence of classes. The only way to eliminated classes is to enslave all people into the position of equal poverty, all having the equal right to the possessions of everyone else. Beyond that, how is anyone able to have any possession at all, since having more possessions than the next person brings that person into a position of having “more” of something, which is not an indication of equality? The only way to emerge from the “dictatorship of the proletariat” is through violent revolution, which apparently is what Marx desired. Then he predicts the country will finally find its way to Utopia.

What nonsense! A violent revolution will result in a real dictatorship, not of the proletariat but a dictatorship of a single individual or a single party similar to the Communist Party. Another Dark Ages will emerge. In fact, the Dark Ages will be upon us before the revolution. We are heading for it today.

All notions of a system of society must have the Science of Voluntarism as its fundamental mechanism or else the horrors of a Marxian-type world will emerge, as is illustrated in the novel, 1984. We have seen Marxism fail in the USSR, North Korea, Cuba, East Germany and all expired civilizations of the past. Only the Science of Voluntarism can provide us with a “withering away of the State,” and what will emerge will be an harmonious, free, prosperous, and peaceful society.

Norman is a retired podiatrist who loves playing piano, writing music, lawn bowling, bridge, reading, classical music, going to movies, plays, concerts and traveling. He is not a member of any social network, nor does he plan on becoming one. Dr. Imberman has written a fantastic Christmas song which he had professionally recorded as a demonstration record. He is looking for a publisher, or A & R man, or record producer to listen to his song. It deserves to be a permanent member of the portfolio of familiar and favorite Christmas songs.